Album

My grandmother is there;
her parents, brothers, sisters,
gathered in youthful incarnations.
1916. More than a hundred years
represented on that page:
Hilda, George, Theresa, Chance,
Eugene, Carrie, Katie,
Henry and Rosena in solemn gaze,
studying the future.

For there, from this portrait,
mirroring my regard,
are my mother's eyes
(my grandmother's, her grandfather's),
a remembered smile from my uncle
(and his grandfather before him)--
faces as familiar
as my family, today.
Those faces, our faces;
those eyes, those features,
reflections of our present
captured in the past.